In case you weren’t paying attention, there was a War on Thanksgiving last week. It ended in surrender, with more than 30 million Americans going shopping in the 36 hours after their Turkey Day feast and enlisting with several million US workers manning the cash registers and earning some much-needed overtime pay.

As a result, retail sales — which account for 70 percent of the nation’s economy — got a much-needed head start on this shorten holiday shopping season.

Workers who have been struggling with an ever-shrinking workweek since the financial crisis hit five years ago got a bump in their weekly paycheck.

Many in the media rued the fact that Americans have to work on the holiday.

Trouble is, the argument that we need to reclaim Thanksgiving’s position as the most wholesome of American holidays doesn’t hold much water.

Thanksgiving work shifts were actually far more common a decade ago than they are today. According to Bloomberg BNA, back in 2002 nearly half of all the companies surveyed required some employees to work on Thanksgiving Day, a practice that is now seen as Grinch-like behavior.

Today that number is down to 36 percent.

Nine out of 10 US manufacturing workers are enjoying a four-day weekend, according to Bloomberg, while Apple — America’s most successful company — gave its non-retail workers all of last week off with pay. With few exceptions for stores that cater to overseas tourists, most Apple stores were shuttered on Thanksgiving as well.

For those stores that did open their doors, including Macy’s and Walmart there was a pay-off for holiday workers. Walmart employees got holiday pay and will receive a 25 percent discount on their yule-tide purchases, while Macy’s employees got paid overtime. The company also noted that virtually every employee working that day volunteered to do so.

Sure, in a world where the harvest had been reaped and the factories had been shuttered, it was nice to have a holiday that was an oasis from the quotidian demands of employment.

But the US has now been fully transformed into a consumer economy — a process that has been going on for the past 50 years.

Those offended by the fact that millions of Americans shopped or worked after last week’s holiday dinner should be thankful for the boost to the economy, and workers’ paychecks, offered by our ever-industrious retailers.